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Sunday, 31 August 2014

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - a reflection on righteousness

Not only is
this title one of the greatest westerns ever made (personally I think A Fist Full of Dollars is the greatest
western of all time!) but the title itself tells us something very profound
about human nature.There is something
of an epidemic at the moment, not just outside the church but more worryingly inside the church.It is the problem of thinking that we are
Good.

If you ask
just about anybody they will say that they think they are all things considered
a 'good person' and that people are by nature generally 'good people' even
though things in their lives can go amiss.
Sometimes someone will say that they have done a few naughty things like
telling white lies or on occasion getting jealous - but they then say 'everyone
makes those kinds of mistakes so overall I'm still a pretty good person." Here we see people claiming that because
other people do those things then they are still 'good.'

Other people
measure how 'good' they are not by everyone else doing the same things but
because there is always somebody who is more 'bad' than they are. A man who cheats on his wife might say that
it doesn't make him a 'bad' person - people who murder people are the kind of
people who are 'bad'. But of course in
prison if you speak the murderers they consider themselves 'better' than the
rapists or the paedophiles - those are the 'bad' people, those are the truly
despicable ones!

Whether we
measure how 'good' we are by how 'good' other people are, or we measure how 'good' we are by the fact that
there are people who are far more 'bad' than us we still end up being 'ugly'. This is because the Bible is perfectly clear,
crystal clear: "as it is written, THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN
ONE" (Romans 3.10) When we hide
from that reality, the simple fact that we are all 'bad' people (if you don't believe
it just turn on the news or think about how embarrassed and ashamed you would be to have
every thought you ever had played out
before your sweet dear old grandma!) then we become ugly because we judge other
people as better or worse than us when the reality is that no matter how 'good'
we may feel we have no reason to boast as we are still 'bad'.

So the Bible
tells us that actually all of us are 'bad' and our denial of this makes us 'ugly'. This is why Jesus came - to give us GOOD NEWS. How can we be 'good' or as the Bible would
say 'righteous'? The answer is not
trying harder but Jesus. "This
righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe"
(Romans 3.22). When we believe in Jesus
- the only person who was ever 'good' because "only God is good" (Mark 10.18) -
He takes up all of our 'bad' and our 'ugly' and nails it to the old rugged
cross and then He gives us His righteousness, His 'good'. Just remember though that as Christians our
'good' is not our own it is Christ's so we have absolutely no reason to boast
in ourselves.

Just
remember: Jesus alone is Good, we are all Bad, don't let pride make you Ugly.